Fathom (17 page)

We hadn’t been this close to each other since I’d kissed him.

I swallowed nervously, tried smiling but it didn’t work.

We both said ‘hey’ as he inched awkwardly past me, his long hair hanging in his eyes, and then he fidgeted with the combination on his locker. When he finally opened the door, an avalanche of papers and books tumbled out. At the same time, the bell rang—the final warning that you better drop whatever you’re doing and dash to homeroom. But instead of heading to class, I was helping Sean cram all the junk back into his locker so he could slam it closed. Then we both accidentally grabbed the same book at the same time, his hand was on top of mine and a flush of heat ran up my arm.

“You better get going,” he said as he transferred the book to his other hand.

“I don’t care if I’m late. I need to talk to you about something.”

“I—I can’t, not now. I already missed first and second period two days last week because of my science project.” He didn’t look at me. Instead, he stared into his locker as if the secrets of the universe were in there. “I didn’t think my meeting would take this long, but—”

And then he didn’t say any more.

“What meeting, Sean?”

I could hear it in his voice and when he glanced at me, I saw it in his eyes. Whatever was going on, it was bad.

“Nothing. Never mind.”

“That’s not fair,” I mumbled.

I wanted to punch him in the arm. What a time to pull the old “nothing” clause. I needed to talk to him about Friday—needed to make sure that he knew I hadn’t been making out with Caleb, no matter what Riley had said. On top of that, now something else was wrong, but he wasn’t going to tell me what it was.

Just then two guys on the track team walked past. They both smiled and nodded at me, a gesture Sean couldn’t see. Ratchet up that creep factor. I was beginning to wonder if Riley’s rumor about me and Caleb had been circulating over the weekend, buzzing around Facebook and Twitter; maybe all the Paper Dolls had been texting each other and their boyfriends.

“I gotta go,” Sean said, his voice thick, his head down again.

“Guess I’ll see you at lunch.”

“Yeah.”

Then he dashed off. He didn’t even finish putting away the rest of his stuff.

“Hey!” I called after him, my voice echoing through the nearly empty halls. But he didn’t turn around, didn’t answer, didn’t stop.

So then I was stuck all alone, cramming his junk back inside his locker and shutting the door.

•

The morning slid by in a blur. I could barely remember sitting through any of my classes. I think my geometry final asked something about congruent triangles, but I don’t know if I answered it right or not. And I accidentally turned in my history homework to my chemistry teacher. Then somebody laughed when I told Mr. B that hydrochloric acid was an oxidation agent. After that I made sure not to talk to anyone, no teachers and, well, the other students weren’t talking to me anyway. The boys were still giving me weird looks and the girls were giving me the standard upturned nose.

Without realizing it, I wrote a poem about secrets between history and French. Sixty-five words to the drinking fountain, turn, fifteen words to the classroom door.

I bumped into some guy and he grinned, mumbled something about how great my perfume was, except I wasn’t wearing any perfume today.

He almost made me forget what I was doing.

Eight words to my desk. I carefully sat down, got out my books and papers and pen, then I chewed on my right thumbnail, opened my notebook and started writing.

Meanwhile, all I could think about was Sean.

Why was he keeping a secret from me? Didn’t he trust me anymore?

And then, somebody opened one of the windows and the sweet fragrance of the Pacific drifted in and my thoughts instantly shifted to Caleb.

What was it he had wanted to tell me yesterday?

I had a feeling that he could answer a lot of the questions that kept bouncing around inside my head. Stuff like, why does hawthorn make my skin burn, and why won’t Brianna admit that she saw me as a Selkie? And why was Riley such a beast? That girl had some serious issues. Every time I thought about her, my skin caught on fire and my thoughts turned dark and primitive. I wanted to take her out into the deepest part of the ocean and hold
her
under until she begged me to—

I sat up straight and my pen fell out of my fingers.

The skin on my right hand was covered with tiny green scales.

Just then, at that exact same moment, the teacher called on me, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying. I felt dizzy and my stomach was rolling. A rush of heat flowed from my gut to the top of my head and all the angles in the room turned sharp. I stood up, fought against a flood of panic—
I can’t be turning into a Selkie, I just can’t, not here, not now
—and then I was running out of the room, no explanation, no hall pass, just scrambling down the hallway as fast as I could, my head down, hoping that my hair would cover up my face and that nobody would look at me.

I flew into the girl’s restroom, smashed the door against the wall with a loud bang, hoping that no one else was in here.
Please, God, let everyone be in class, don’t let anyone be skipping, not now.

I ran into a stall but just before the door closed, I saw my reflection in the mirror. Me, as a Selkie.

Long wild, black hair. Pale green skin that glittered like iridescent eye shadow. And crazy pale blue eyes. They glowed in the dim stall, like I was a super-hero from a graphic novel.

I yanked the stall door closed, locked it, my stomach heaving. I swiveled, just in time, dumped the contents of my stomach in the toilet. Then I threw up again. When it finally seemed like my stomach was calm, I flushed, wiped my mouth with toilet paper. I pressed my forehead against the stall door.

And I started to cry.

What in the world is happening to me?

Then I sank to the floor. I was crying and I was shaking and I couldn’t stop.

Kira:

I crouched on the floor, knees pulled to my forehead and tried to figure out what to do. Unfortunately, all the stuff that kept running through my mind was stuff that I couldn’t do—like go see the school nurse or call 911 or call one of my friends. Right now I wasn’t even sure whether Brianna and Sean were still my friends and, if they were, whether either one of them would know what to do.

There was only person left who might be able to help.

Gram.

I lifted my head and pulled out my cell phone.

Nothing quite like turning into a monster during finals.

I dialed our home number, hoping she wasn’t out in the yard or down at the beach, or even worse, sitting around the table drinking shots with her friends from the local paranormal society. The phone rang six times, was just about to go to voice mail when she answered.

“Gram?” I whispered.

“Is that you, Kira? Speak up!”

“Gram, I can’t talk any louder—”

“You can’t walk any souther?”

I sighed, raised my voice a tiny bit, then really fast I told her everything, even that creepy part about those tourist chicks who drug me out into the ocean and almost drowned me. At first, I worried about scaring her, then I worried she would tell me that I was imagining all of this and I’d know that I really was losing my mind.

But right now she was my only lifeline and I had to take it.

“Everything’s going to be fine, Kira,” she said as soon as I finished talking. “Just relax, sweetheart, and give me a couple of minutes.”

I waited while she dug around through all of her folklore books, then I confessed that three of her books were hidden under my bed. The rustle of pages sounded in the background, interspersed with an occasional comment like, “Mmm-hmmm,” and “No, that won’t work.”

I think my hair grew two inches longer while I waited.

“Okay,” she said at last. “I’ve got it. Are you ready?”

“Yeah.” But part of me wondered if she really knew what to do. Sure, she made little charms out of salt and sand, and she grew strange herbs in the garden. But then she also hung around with a group of old ladies who thought you could catch moonlight in a jar. Maybe Gram only knew bits and pieces of Irish folklore. Maybe there wasn’t a magic incantation to solve my problems.

Then she cleared her voice and started reading a passage out loud.

As soon as she spoke those words, my skin started to heat up.

“Repeat what I say, right after me,” she said.

By now I was scared. What if her cure was worse than what I already had? It took me several times to get all the words right, but by the time I did, I had her incantation memorized. Backwards and forwards and sideways.

“Open the door and look at yourself in the mirror,” she said.

I stood up, listened to make sure I was only one in the room. Then I cracked the stall door quietly. It took all of my courage to lift my head and look at my reflection. I expected to see glowing eyes and glittering scales. But I saw myself, my normal self, in the mirror and every muscle in my body relaxed at once and I almost fell to my knees.

I’d never been so glad to see my pale skin in all my life.

“Thank God,” I said as I pulled the door closed again. “Thank you so much, Gram, really! I was so scared and I didn’t know who to talk to.” I rambled on and on until both Gram and I started laughing.

Then a quiet came over both of us, a realization of the bond we shared.

“I love you,” I told her.

Her voice changed timber, it both softened and deepened when she answered me.

“I love you too, Kira,” she said. “I always will.”

•

The stall door swung shut and I told Gram goodbye. An unexpected peace flowed through me. Whatever had happened to me was real, awful but real. It hadn’t been in my head. Whole nightmarish kingdoms collapsed around me, fears that had been built brick by brick over the years as I had worried about my future, hoping and praying that I would never do anything like what my mother had done.

Then I remembered lashing out at Lucy the other day, how sudden it had been, how out of control.

One step at a time. That’s what I told myself.

I’d been hiding in this stall for nearly an hour. It was time to get back to the real world. I knew that I’d missed the rest of my French class. In fact, I’d almost missed lunch and I’d promised Sean I would meet him.

I really needed to talk to him.

Throughout my conversation with Gram I’d been dimly aware of the influx of other students as they scrambled in and out between classes. Another girl came in while I was hanging up my phone. She slammed a nearby stall door shut, then I heard her shove her fingers down her throat and she threw up.

I flushed the toilet in my stall, walked out and started washing my hands.

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when I saw who came out of the stall a minute later. Lucy MacElroy. The girl I almost knuckle-punched in the mouth a few days ago and my own personal nemesis. She pulled a Coach rolling tote behind her, pretended not to see me while she washed her hands and face. Then with a sigh, she opened her matching purse and started touching up her makeup. In between lip gloss and mascara, she glanced at me in the mirror.

I looked at our reflections, remembering a time long ago when we went roller skating together and how we snuck into the bathroom with her older sister’s purse. There we had tried on her sister’s lipstick and blush, laughing.

“I thought you got suspended,” I said.

Her nostrils flared as she lacquered on a fresh layer of midnight black eyeliner. “My dad talked to the guidance counselor this morning. They’re old friends.”

Old friends. Just like us.

I wondered if her dad knew she was bulimic or if he was still too busy with his plastic surgery practice to notice her.

“This is probably going to sound lame, but I shouldn’t have tried to hit you the other day,” I said.

She gave me a puzzled look. “Did your dad tell you to say that?”

“No.”

“Liar. You’re such a loser, Callahan.”

For years I’d believed her. Not today.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m the loser who’s gonna smoke you on our chemistry final.”

“That’ll be the day.” But she looked at me in the mirror again and saw the half-smile on my face. Her expression softened for a split second. She almost grinned back.

Almost.

Still it was a lot better than our last conversation.

Kira:

I left the bathroom, hoping I could get to the cafeteria before lunch ended, so I could catch up with Sean. I careened out the restroom door, walking too fast, and I accidentally collided with a spidery-tall Goth wannabe. Wearing a ripped black T-shirt, black jeans and a chrome spiked belt, he grinned down at me. It was like looking at my alter-ego in junior high.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, then I tried to dodge past him.

Black-rimmed eyes like a fawn blinked at me. “Kira, um, you left so fast and you didn’t take your—um—”

I glanced at him again, realized he was in my French class, the one I had just dashed out of because of my Great-Disappearing-Girl act. He was also carrying my knapsack and my books in his arms. All the stuff I had left behind.

“And I wrote down our, you know, our—”

“Our assignment for tomorrow?” I asked. I could see it on the piece of paper that he dangled in my face. Otherwise I never would have guessed.

He nodded. Like a bobble head.

“That’s my knapsack and my books, right?” I asked. We were both walking down the hallway toward the cafeteria, but not as fast as I wanted, and he still hadn’t offered to hand my stuff over.

“Yeah.” His eyebrows creased upward and he sighed. “But I can, uh, carry them. If you want?”

“That’s okay. I’ll take them,” I told him. “And thanks.”

He started to hand them over, but it seemed like they were stuck to his hand. The strap to my knapsack clung to his fingers, even though I tried to pry it away. It turned into a bizarre tug of war.